aimClear Search Marketing Blog

Greetings from CalTrain, heading from Santa Clara to San Francisco Station. After client meetings today in umm …Napa, we’ll be returning to the Santa Clara Convention Center tonight to kick off SMX West 2009.

Regarded as a premiere search marketing conference industry conclave, ‘West promises to be jam-packed with vital information, camaraderie, networking and serious fun. As the sun rises and my  train rumbles through the Mountain View Station, here’s a run down of don’t-miss aimClear SMX highlight activities, including private party information. Read the rest of this entry »

There was a palpable hush in our aimClear rotunda office yesterday afternoon as, *gasp,* I finally caved personally to incorrect usage of of the initials “SEM” to humor our PPC client. Sadly in this wacky world of nearly indistinguishable acronyms, abbreviations and cryptic terms there’s a colloquial tragedy afoot. Even the New York Times got SEM wrong. Read the rest of this entry »

Sniff, I remember feeling so emotional to meet such amazing StumbleUpon friends. Now I haven’t been there for pleasure, networking or day-to-day communication in months.

My friends all seem to hang out on Facebook, LinkedIn & Twitter now. Did eBay, proud owner of SU, bet 75 million on a dying shark with their May 2007 purchase? Read the rest of this entry »

While classic keyword research counts phrase permutations users search for, Buzz Pocket Mining measures the individual and community-wide social graph. The good news is, incredibly powerful BPM tools are totally free!

“Social graph” simply means categorizing definable pockets of members’ participatory chatter as folks interact, share content, make friends and live lives together. Often expressed by a tag cloud, Buzz Pockets are how we index topical interests, as expressed by users. Read the rest of this entry »

In an wild-west environment replete with social media carpetbaggers, content theft and predatory jerks, qualifying search consultants can be challenging for clients.  Amongst other means, we’ve settled on a holistic strategy to prove advice we offer.

As part of our services we proactively lead clients to search marketing conferences and thought leaders. Think how much confidence this empowering ethic requires.

SEM customers tend to be hands-on kind of folks. They ask great questions, get excited, wish they knew more and are afraid of what they don’t understand. Read the rest of this entry »

photo credit: Gandalfar
In distributing content, it’s possible to increase posts’ propensity to go hot in social channels, simply by publishing correctly to social distribution networks built amongst individuals in your organization.

Publishing “correctly” means, when pressing the CMS “publish” button, your message instantly touches hundreds, thousands and potentially millions of similar-minded folks all over the world. Read the rest of this entry »

Cash and ROI from ecommerce is easy to calculate. Measuring income from AdSense and other affiliate revenue is simple for publishers to weigh, in order to validate investments in content, SEO or arbitrage. Leads are easy to count, as are associated PPC expenses.

However, evaluating a website’s ongoing profitability is often not quite so cut and dried. In these times of budgetary duress, short-sighted thinking too often fosters short-sheeting the corporate web presence. Here are 6 less obvious cash-in-the-bank criteria, by which to measure a site’s hidden success. Start with the statement, “a website could be considered profitable if it:” Read the rest of this entry »

It’s delightful that our favorite social media marketers are so giving. In the daily SEM social content stream we’re all each others’ playground friends, mentors, students, scientists, satirists, freaks and thought leaders.

There’s so much to learn from each other in various social channels, to stimulate and further advise content ideas. To me, the most important social marketing skill is a willingness to share unconditionally.

Today we posed the question: “What do you think the most important ‘values’ are for social marketing?” It was slightly loaded in that the word “values” means something different to everyone. Here are the answers from some of my favorite industry folks. I’ve linked to their Twitter profiles and highly recommend following their tweets. Read the rest of this entry »

Download Song: The Gift
In 1993, I composed and released 2 CDs blending early digital recordings of dolphins communicating, ocean soundscapes,  ambient habitat, acoustic grand piano, global percussion and my favorite pop/jazz musician friends in Minneapolis. Having just enjoyed (mostly) a couple of years songwriting for PolyGram International Publishing, “Dolphin Dreams” and “Dolphin Serenade” marked my entre’ on the national scene as a solo “new age” recording artist.

It was absolutely spiritual, recording dolphins in the semi-wild and humane captivity.  My most incredible memory from that era was the privilege of being present during a live dolphin birth, hydrophone in the water and later orchestrating the birth playing grand piano, whilst looking over Boston’s skyline from the studio. Read the rest of this entry »

Unlike most blog posts, I’m truly hopeful that (a) selected good Samaritan Mac evangelists will chime in to explain why I’m completely wrong. (b) Apple and software manufacturers will take this input and fix some baffling ticks. Read the rest of this entry »